The Tour to Tanglewood was behind me, I had managed to put about 800 miles on the Tarmac in just a couple of months. My intention was to round it out to an even 1000 miles before putting the bike away for the winter. As it turned out, the weather was quite mild, even for NC standards so I was able to ride through the entire winter. This was good and bad. The good was I was able to continue my fitness routine, which was getting almost addictive. As you will remember from my earlier posts, I started this adventure as a 5'11" 238LB guy. While I felt a little overweight, it had gradually crept up on me through the years and I didn't know just how overweight I actually was. While I can't do anything about my height, I can say that with riding being my primary form of exercise, I have managed to start this cycling season at a much reduced 186LBS.....that's a loss of FIFTY-TWO POUNDS!!!!! But I digress....
To offset the great fitness I was experiencing (none of my clothes fit anymore), I found that there are certain things on the bike that tend to wear out periodically. The first to go was my chain after about 1200 miles. I'm told that this is about average wear, but I wanted a longer service interval so I stepped up to a higher end chain than what came on the bike originally. I replaced it with a SRAM PC1071 chain with chrome hardened rollers for durability. This was a pretty good choice since that chain is still on the bike today, with just under 1800 miles on the chain at about 50% wear.
At this stage I really learned the importance of chain maintenance. While I had been wiping the chain down after every ride and reoiling it, I stepped up my game and decided to run it through a chain machine after every ride to get all the grit out of the links before I reoiled it. I don't know how much difference that really makes, but I do notice the nice bright chain every time I set out on a ride.
About 400 miles after the chain gave out, my top gear on my rear cassette started slipping badly. When I ruled out a tuning issue on the rear derailleur, I figured out it was time to replace that as well. As with the chain, I took this opportunity to upgrade the cassette in two ways. I got a stronger unit from SRAM, and a slightly different tooth count as well. I was now running an 11-26t cassette as opposed to the 11-28 that came on the bike. It mainly kept weight down, and changed my gear ratios keeping it geared higher in the lower range. This was intended to help me use more of the gears since I rarely went into lower gears on my rides.
As you see, I was really doing a lot of riding, even though this was the off season. My intention had been to store the bike with 1000 miles on it, but instead I hit 2000 miles in March. That meant a lot of cold weather riding. Well, it wasn't that cold, but I was equipped with only warm weather riding attire, and a single rain coat. For Christmas my wife got me a set of arm warmers which helped tremendously and allowed me to ride in temperatures in the 30's. Not that I liked riding in the cold, but it was possible.
This was one of those days that never got out of the mid 40's. While it might not be that bad to stand in, imagine riding at 20mph with the cool breeze. Yeah, I was numb and you can see the snotsickles in my nose here if you look close enough. But I was still riding and that was the important thing. I tried very hard not to lose my endurance I had worked so hard to achieve. So, I was still regularly riding 50 miles each time I went out. In fact, it is a running joke in the house that I won't get on the bike for less than 50 miles these days. I never would have thought I would have been able to say that when I was out of breath just riding 2 miles down the road to the school.
The nicest thing about the off season...well the early part of it anyways was that my wife Toni went out and rode with me since it wasn't too hot. There is a fine window that she will ride in, and mid fall seemed to fit into that range. When I bought my Tarmac, I had enough left over that I was able to get Toni a bike too. Of course, she is riding Specialized as well. Her mount is a Vita Elite. Its a hybrid bike, but one that she is comfortable on for the most part. Considering that cycling is not her hobby she does very well when she goes out. Her first ride on the Vita was around 10 miles or so. She has ridden around 38 miles in a single ride, so I have to give her lots of credit for doing so well, and keeping me company occasionally while on a ride.
Here she is on one of her early rides. It was only her second long ride, and it ended up being about 22 miles after riding out to visit my Mom. You can tell by the look on her face that she really doesn't want to go any further, but she did, and finished the ride out. This was where she learned about bonking which is when the body runs out of fuel. I had experienced it a few times before, and knew to eat, but Toni is more stubborn than I am when it comes to that and refused to eat on that ride. It was a mistake she hasn't made since. I'm just so proud of her, and am looking forward to riding with her in the 2012 Tour to Tanglewood. While she won't be riding the same distance as I will be, I think she will do great in the 30 mile routes.
Since I was able to continue riding through the off season, and didn't loose my endurance as I was afraid of, I started to form another new goal for myself. I wanted to ride a century. That's 100 miles for those of you who don't know. Not only that, but I wanted to do it for the Tour, and follow it up with an additional 70 miles the second day which represent the longest routes on both days. Its time to amp up the training....its cycling season now.
No comments:
Post a Comment